I write English, and also English dialect poetry, so the distinction is crucial for me, although I'm a native speaker. It also affects rhythm (metre) as well as sound, as syllables are shortened or dropped,or occasionally lengthened. Metre gives the clue to pronunciation, and can do so even in "free verse". T S Eliot's Waste Land was all about the musicality of the sound of the poem, and he included other languages and even non-language sounds, songs snatches and samples from the everyday - such as the pub landlord's closing time cry of "Hurry up please, it's time".  So called "poetic license" allows for the sound or pronunciation the poem needs to take precedence over conventional pronunciation or rhythm. Pronunciation is important for Betjeman's poetry, and is absolutely crucial for performance poetry, but it depends on style and genre -literary poetry may be much less musical. Another factor is audience - dialect poetry would be problematic for non-natives, and even some non-dialect speakers (I lived in NE England where there is a strong dialect tradition,in song and poetry, even prose, but even I don't get all of it).

When I'm writing, a certain cluster of sounds, especially vowel sounds, can sometimes start to guide my writing.  It's almost as if the sounds necessitate the use of certain words or phrases, as if sound sometimes drives, at least partially, composition.  When I write about where I grew up in rural Arkansas, I think I'm much more aware of dialect and regional pronunciation. Even if dialect doesn't appear in the poem (except sometimes in occasional word choice), regional pronunciation will usually inflect the way I hear the poem and the way I read the poem aloud.  The few times I've written in Irish or in French, I find I'm sometimes impelled by a similar sense of assonantal composition (though my second-language vocabularies are not as rich). 

Thanks Veronica, Stephen, Ed and Koon kau for sharing your valuable experiences.

When I write, I hear multiple voices, like Stephen and Ed. But the reason why I am asking this question is really because I worry for children. I have seen children's works in HK where it seemed obvious to me that they have in the minds a very local accent, which is great. (E.g. rhyming Chupa Chup with 7-up). However, in HK where society tends to equate British/American accents with correctness and prestige, the inner voices of the children face distortion by the so-called correct readings. These children are likely to also face corrections to their works that are in my view unjustified.

I am really happy to see that Ed and Stephen write in the sounds they prefer, and I wish that children in Asia would also be given that same right.

Again, many thanks! 

I think musical hallucinations are at the basis of musical creativity, especially during the 19th C epidemic of classical composing in Europe, and for some poetry and prose compositions where there is a strong rhythmical component. 

Thanks Anthony! That's such a great angle.

"That's such a great angle."

Others have come up independently with similar ideas.  I am thinking particularly of a book by a late US English professor who wrote a book about 20y ago proposing that verbal hallucinations were at the basis of literary creativity.  Can't trace her just now (Williams?).   See also Julian Jaynes.

Being British and brought up primarily to be monolingual, I only think in English. On the few occasions in my life that I have written poetry, the words were just in my head as though they already existed. I only had to write them down.

Because they were in my head already, the words and language simply echo my thoughts. Very English, but not my normal spoken English.... My family would laugh me down if I were to speak poetry to them!

Dylan Thomas's poetry is very 'musical' (that is, rhythm and euphony feature strongly), written by a Welshman in English, and read by him with a sonorous and relatively 'plummy' English accent. ...

When I write a poem or any creative writing, I am the first critic to my works. Poem sounds in the heart/mind not head.  It gladens the heart because of its rhythm.

https://www.academia.edu/9537022/%C3%89tude_des_po%C3%A8mes_africains_R%C3%A9veille-toi_mon_peuple_dUnimna_Angrey

"On the few occasions in my life that I have written poetry, the words were just in my head as though they already existed. I only had to write them down." (Margaret)

The clearest demonstration of this process is seen with classical composers.  Inspection of their (auto)biographies clearly shows they were not really composers, more transcribers of their musical hallucinations which often comprised reworkings of sacred tunes, folk songs and their own previous work!  Yesterday was a MH during sleep, and it took Paul McCartney a long time to realise that though it sounded very familiar it was in fact original.

Thanks everyone for all this amazing information. I am particularly excited to read about your composing experiences, and am very grateful for all the references. With any luck, the information I'm reading here looks like great material for a paper at some point.

Yes I do, and when it´s in English, it "sounds" the way I pronounce the language myself (I´m a native Spanish speaker with English as a second language).

Hope this helps !

Yes, whichever language I write in (or sign in if it's BSL poetry) it is pronounced in my head with my accent. BUT sometimes when I read it aloud, I find stumbles and knots that I didn't identify in my head. And then once I have performed a poem, I can only hear it in my head in that performance interpretation, so it gets 'stuck' like that, as if it is recorded. Isn't there evidence somewhere that when we rehearse language in our heads that there is some neural engagement with the muscles that would articulate those words? I have a tickle memory of that. 

Thanks Javi! Yes, that was helpful.

And Elvire, that's amazing. Stupid me! I didn't even think of sign!!! This is mind-opening. Thank you,

I've been writing (and teaching) poetry all my life and yes, I do hear it in my head.  I also hear prose.  When as I child I moved to London from Ohio and 3 years later back again, I became aware of it because the "accent" of my inner hearing changed as I adapted my speech, first to a North London accent and then back to a US Midwest accent.  It explains why I'm such a slow reader--but good at reading aloud. 

Some people don't hear it: here's a cool trick to try on people to get a feel for whether they do or don't (played in a linguistics course I took in the late 70s, when it seemed about half the people 'heard' what they read--now among my students it's more like 10%):  tell people to grip a pen or pencil between their back teeth, on both sides of the mouth, and close their eyes.  Write the word 'bubble' on the board or in big letters with a magic marker on a piece of paper.  Tell them to open their eyes.  Some will giggle right away because they'll 'hear' the word in their minds sounding like someone trying to say 'bubble' with a pencil between their jaws.  The others think you've lost your mind.  it wakes up people who do it but never noticed it before.  

I think the proportion's changed because people text instead of talking on the phone now, and spend half their social life on Facebook etc..  As you've noticed if you teach, they're a bit rusty with speech generally--we added an "oral" requirement at my university to remedy this.

Yes ofcorse..  But after being expert in writing !  

"Isn't there evidence somewhere that when we rehearse language in our heads that there is some neural engagement with the muscles that would articulate those words? (Elvire)

see A R Luria, in Higher Cortical Functions in Man, I think.

Thanks Anthony for the reference!

I not only hear the poem in my head, I hear it in my ears because I say it out loud, both as it's developing and after I think it's finished. I often give poetry readings, and in doing so I've found that performing the words for others has a very different feel than hearing them at my desk or in my head, and a lot of later revisions come from those performance experiences.

I write my own poems exclusively in English, but I do play around with translations of Spanish texts (for my own edification). In those cases, sound is still important, though getting at the layers of meaning matters most. On the other hand, I translated a poem of Borges entitled "Habla Un Busto de Jano" solely because the existing translations I'd read seemed intent on smoothing out in English what in Borges' Spanish was a very rough, almost violent music. Here are some lines from the original, in which Janus refers to his two faces, one looking into the past, the other into the future:

[...] Los veo y son iguales

los hierros, las discordias y los males

que Alguien pudo borrar y no ha borrado

ni borrará. [...]

Alan S. Trueblood, whose translation is the most widely published, renders the lines this way:

Common to both I see,

drawn swords, evil, discord;

one who could have removed them let them be

and does so still.

My version tries to restore the roughness:

I see them both,

both rife with swords, discords, and evils

Someone could rub out and hasn’t rubbed out

nor will ever rub out.

There really was no excuse to offer a new translation except to approximate that music.

 Mr. Hutchison, bravo!  I like yours better too!  And "rub out" isn't better only musically but in every way.

Thanks, Ms. Campbell! I only wish I could have mirrored Borges's sonnet form....

I bet you can.

To answer your question, yes, I hear the poem as it unfolds in my head, but I also see the poem as a visual experience as I'm writing. If it doesn't look right or sound right, I edit with my hears and eyes. There also has to be that play with the words in the semantics too.

Joseph really nice... here´s my attempt

I see them and they´re same

irons, evils and discords

that Someone could have wiped

but has not

and won´t

When I write poetry, the words do not appear first.  It is rather like an idea, an image,  appearing in my mind. Next, I try to formulate the image in words. Again, these appear in my mind. I quickly write the words down, then play about with them, until I am satisfied.

There is a limited variety of approaches to create poems, and this is but one.

What is your method of writing poetry Lian-Hee?

Mark

(eg below)

Leaving a subway tunnel, not knowing

I'd entered; the blast of morning light

Vague hoverings of voices, unseen

It is the message that counted the most!!

 It is well-known, that the genesis of  the poetry is closely tied with  the music ( rhythm). I try to write in several languages (Georgian, Russian, English, Italian) and it is interesting, that the "recipe" is always the same- initially hearing the rhythm of the verse, so... the music... Then the  main words ( or phrases) are coming. But it is my personal experience  only. Euterpe comes to me in this way.

Thank you Ekaterine. It is important for me to know that it's not just hearsay, but that at least modern poets actually can attest to this. The implications of which is partially reflected in one of my recent papers.

Conference Paper Hearing the Inner Voices of Asian English Poets

I have written some poetry in Setswana and English in the past, and just like in the case of music, it was more like transcribing a heart-beat or a mental rhythm. 

I think, a lot depends what is purpose behind a poem. It has rhythm and rhyme but also as the above researchers pointed out pronunciation. I will add here a deep message and vocabulary for the readers as well. However, answer to your question that is 'mental pronunciation', it is hard because it is difficult to bring mental equivalence between two languages. I hope it helps! 

Whenever I write something that is meaningful for me, and specially if its poetry, I hear the sounds in my head. Not only the sounds, but the rhythm, the counterweight of periods and phrases. And when one feels oneself "into the language", sounds, words and thoughts flow with an inner strength, as if they were choosing or searching each other. Its a very pleasant experience that of being absorbed.

"Its a very pleasant experience that of being absorbed."

Musical hallucinations regardless of the medical conditions with which they are associated can give rise to ecstatic transcendental feelings.  These were familiar to medieval mystics and referred to as angel song.

"The clearest demonstration of this process is seen with classical composers.  Inspection of their (auto)biographies clearly shows they were not really composers, more transcribers of their musical hallucinations which often comprised reworkings of sacred tunes, folk songs and their own previous work... Yesterday was a MH during sleep"

Starting and ending sleep are well-documented to involve hallucinations, even in normals, especially in those with hypersensitive ears.  See this in 11y-old Alma Deutscher, a world-famous classical composer: 

"Melodies and story ideas also come to her when she is about to fall asleep, dreaming or on the cusp of waking.  Occasionally she stays up into the early hours getting everything down in her notebook.  'It's funny that although I'm a very happy person I can come up with very sad melodies,' she says...She dislikes pop, because it is 'too loud, it hurts my ears' ..." 

Evening Standard Nov 30 p 38

Further to the previous response on Alma D, consistent with my theory on musical creativity:

"Alma played me some of her opera last year at her home in Dorking...It was a dazzling encounter with a girl who was then just ten years old.  What I heard, however, was far more great potential than good music.  Everything she had written was, in effect, pastiche -- particularly of Mozart but also of Schubert with touches of Rossini.  The pastiches were charmingly concocted but there wasn't a melody or harmony that couldn't have been written 200 years ago.  Nor did I sense any undercurrent of deep emotion beneath the facile stream of notes.  That doesn't mean that Alma won't evolve into an extraordinary composer."                                       The Times Dec 31st 2016 p 5

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This supports the idea that otogenic musical hallucinations are the foundation of auditory creativity.   Such MHs comprise re-experienced engrained musical memories, long forgotten folk tunes, religious music or unconscious plagiarisms.

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"Her opera...was partly inspired by ideas she had while skipping".

"Cinderella is a young composer with beautiful melodies in her head...Quite a few of my melodies and themes for this opera came while I was skipping...I take my skipping rope to the rehearsals"

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I think MHs were very important in human cultural evolution, inspiring religion, music and poetry.   Fasting, dehydration and drug taking would have strongly predisposed to MHs.  I had also wondered if dancing would also have predisposed to MHs, since the rhythmic activation of the vestibular part of the inner ear could also have overstimulated the auditory part, leading to rhythmic tinnitus and hence MHs.   So there may be a simple specific explanation for why skipping jogs the musical memory bank.

Hello,

I Write poetry when I am sad and very lonely, at this moment,I Write the most beautiful poetry and the finest feelings in Arabic language

I am more specialized in writing Flirtatious poetry, I also write purely social issues and political literature, It is not a hobby for me, but rather a reality of very painful stories in society

So,What is the Flirtatious poetry:

Flirtatious poetry Is an art of ancient Arabic poetry, classified as one of the greatest arts of Arabic poetry, through which the poet expresses his feelings towards his beloved, describing her charms, singing beauty, eager to see her, sad to parting, focusing on the description of her A citizen of excellence. Flirtatious poetry throughout the ages Spinning in the pre-Islamic era The yarn was the first place in poetry in the pre-Islamic era, even if it was not the main purpose. They focused on the physical description of women. They described their external form, face and body, excluding the description of the effect it leaves in their intents and emotions. that depicts the breaths of the soul, and its joy in meeting the loved one, and the sorrow of the poet to divide it, which is characterized by the strength of passion .

thank you and good luck ,PEACE!

It is said that Robert Burns, the national poet of Scotland, wrote his masterpiece Tam o' Shanter in a day. The poem is so rich that I would doubt that, but it must be the case that he heard its sounds in his head while composing it.

Here is my work on the poem.

* a new translation of Tam o' Shanter, which you will find on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-nBVIHJIAE

* a monograph on the influence of Old Norse on the poem

* a short article about the translation

* a slide set of the translation

All found here:

https://hcommons.org/members/markperkins/